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US 7,454,139 B2Granted
High-capacity packet-switched ring network
AssigneeAT&T Corp.
InventorsMikhail Boroditsky, Nicholas J. Frigo, Aleksandra Smiljanic
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A packet-switched WDMA ring network has an architecture utilizing packet stacking and unstacking for enabling nodes to access the entire link capacity by transmitting and receiving packets on available wavelengths. Packets are added and dropped from the ring by optical switches. A flexible credit-based MAC protocol along with an admission algorithm enhance the network throughput capacity.
Claims7
An optical packet-switched ring network, comprising:
- a node including
- an optical switch coupled to a fiber of the ring network;
- a transmit switch coupled to the optical switch;
- a wavelength stacking assembly coupled to the transmit switch for aligning in time packets of varying wavelengths created by a fast tunable laser via a bank of delay lines;
- a receive switch coupled to the optical switch;
- and
- a wavelength unstacking assembly coupled to the receive switch.
4 more elements
A method for transmitting and receiving stacked packets on a ring network comprising:
- stacking packets of varying wavelengths created by a fast tunable laser via a bank of delay lines to form a composite transmit data packet aligned in time;
- buffering the transmit data packet in a transmit switch;
- transmitting the transmit data packet onto the ring network via an optical switch;
- receiving a receive data packet via the optical switch;
- buffering the receive data packet in a receive switch;
- and
- unstacking the receive data packet.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.